“A fast-paced roller coaster ride … a fun, action-packed, thoughtful play about what motivates us to do what we do. Who was DB Cooper? We’ll probably never know, but at db, you’ll have a great time speculating.” – Broadway World

“Full-throttle thrills … [Smith] delivers a D.B. Cooper tale with the momentum of a highjacking … Buckle in for a gut-level deconstruction that’s riveting, unexpectedly funny and as ambitious as Cooper’s 10,000-foot high-dive from flight 305.” – Oregonian

“A complex yet compelling piece of theater. This heist story [is] deft and diligent – the payoff is great … Do you sometimes wish your theater seat would rumble and quake while the lights flash, briefly transforming the play you’re seeing into an amusement park ride? Then db may be just the play for you.” – Oregon ArtsWatch

“Fascinating … A fugue, in music, is a melody repeated in complex patterns; in psychiatry, it’s a dissociative state of mind – playwright Tommy Smith infuses both meanings into his ambitious new play … the movement, the timing and the brilliant staging of sex, suicide and slaughter make [FUGUE] extraordinary.”

“Smith leavens his dark, brooding meditation on the mystery of creativity with large doses of wit and humor … at times the same lines are spoken simultaneously in all three of the separate stories, then amplified in counterpoint, with one voice following another, as in a fugue. The result is a play about music which becomes a piece of music itself.”

“The beauty of this play is that these Echo actors and director have all agreed to come together and explore not only the words, but the subtle idea that creative individuals, in some cases, have elements of craziness that influence their flights of genius … an excellent production.”

“[A] formally virtuosic new play about three visionary composers from the Western classical music tradition … By overlapping and interlacing three historical narratives in which emotional trauma is resolved in a defining work of radical artistic transformation, Smith draws an uncomfortably fine line between our darkest, most sociopathic compulsions and the violent discontinuities that shape artistic discourse.”

“Renaissance Italy, Tsarist Russia and early-20th-century Austria provide the settings for Fugue [but] geography is the least of the complexities on tap in Tommy Smith’s new play … the tripartite narratives move at once, much like the interlocking themes evoked by the play’s title.”

Paul Budraitis (director) is a Seattle-based director, actor, writer, and solo performer, as well as a teacher of acting, stage movement, and interdisciplinary art. He directed the premiere of Elizabeth Heffron’s Bo-Nita at Seattle Repertory Theatre, and his solo performance (IN)STABILITY was commissioned and produced by On the Boards. His production of David Mamet’s Edmond received a Seattle Times “Footlight Award” as one of the best productions of 2010, and with his new company Splinter Group, he created The Salesman is Dead and Gone, a non-verbal imagining of the afterlife of Willy Loman from Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Paul was the recipient of a State Department Fulbright grant to study theatre directing at the Lithuanian Music and Theatre Academy (LMTA) in Vilnius, Lithuania, where he earned his master’s degree under the mentorship of visionary theatre director Jonas Vaitkus. In Lithuania, Paul worked with the National Drama Theatre of Lithuania, the State Youth Theatre of Lithuania, the Kaunas State Drama Theatre, and Oskaras Koršunovas/Vilnius City Theatre (OKT). He assisted directors Jonas Vaitkus and Oskaras Koršunovas, and as an actor, he collaborated with acclaimed Finnish director Kristian Smeds on a contemporary adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, which was performed as part of the New Drama Action in Vilnius, as well as in Vienna as part of the Vienna Festival. Most recently, Paul created a new adaptation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, which he directed at Cornish College of the Arts in October 2014.

Hannah Victoria Franklin (actor) is a Seattle based actress with an MFA from the University of Washington and a BA from the University of Colorado. She is a member of the Seagull Project which recently performed Chekhov’s Seagull at ACT Theatre in Seattle and at the Ilkhom Theatre in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. She played Natasha in the 3 Sisters at ACT in 2015. Hannah is the former Managing Director and Co-Artistic Director of the Washington Ensemble Theatre where she performed in six productions including the world premiere of Tommy Smith’s Sextet as Donna Maria, the world premiere of Tall Skinny Cruel Cruel Boys and co-wrote the script and music for Bed Snake, an original rap opera. Hannah was a company member of Intiman Theatre’s 2012 Summer Festival launch where she was seen in Romeo and Juliet, Hedda Gabler and Annie Sullivan in Miracle!, Dan Savage’s irreverent adaptation of the Miracle Worker. She has performed domestically across the United States in Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota, California, Illinois and at New York City’s Carnegie Hall. Internationally, she has performed in Canada, Russia, Uzbekistan and Japan. She has taught acting at the University of Washington and Bishop Blanchet High School as well as directed a dozen plays for Red Eagle Soaring Native Youth Theatre where she is currently serving in her fifth year as a board member. Hannah played Sis in Tommy Smith’s WHITE HOT which earned her a Seattle Theatre Writers nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 2012. She was named Best Actor in Seattle Weekly’s yearly Best of Seattle issue in 2013.

One Coast Collaboration is a culturally driven new play festival that builds bridges between national playwrights and Seattle based theatre artists and companies. OCC takes place over a week at the end of the Seattle summer under flood and torch light, its a break from theatre seats, a festival in which people socialize on blankets instead of a lobby. The festival strives for the work to feel like the beginning of the juiciest secret rather than a final pronouncement. Since 2010, OCC has led to the full production of several new projects including reWilding and Woman at the Well by Martyna Majok, Tall Skinny Cruel Cruel Boys by Caroline McGraw, Moscow, Cheryomuski by Meg Miroshnik, among others.

Labyrinth Theater Company was founded in 1992 by a small group of actors who wanted to push their artistic limits and tell new, more inclusive stories that expanded the boundaries of mainstream theater. In doing so, they created a tightly knit, uninhibited and impassioned ensemble that created incendiary and vital new works for the stage that redefined the landscape of New York City theater. Today, based at the Bank Street Theater in New York’s West Village, Labyrinth is home for diverse theater artists and the daring and visceral work they create. Driven by a diverse group of over 120 actors, directors, playwrights and designers, Labyrinth produces new works for the stage, giving voice to new perspectives that are powerful, groundbreaking and that have changed the face of America’s theatrical landscape. Time Warner Foundation is the lead sponsor for Play Development at Labyrinth. We are also grateful for our newest play development partner, Playwrights of New York (PoNY). Our 2014/15 season includes new plays by Labyrinth Company Members Craig ‘muMs’ Grant, Lucy Thurber, and Melissa Ross and our annual free play reading series, the Barn Series.

Now in its eighth year, the Playwrights of New York (PoNY) Fellowship was founded by playwright Sandi Goff Farkas and LARK Play Development Center, and was created to provide promising emerging playwrights with the financial freedom to create new plays. The first of its kind, the PoNY fellowship addresses the many challenges of living as a playwright in New York City, providing practical support (housing, living expenses and health insurance) as well as more profound considerations such as artistic development and connection to a supportive community. Furthermore, the PoNY Fellowship ensures the continued vibrancy of New York City by keeping some of our most promising artists here, while promoting the type of creative new work that will ultimately enrich the American theatrical canon. The PONY fellows are Eric Dufault, Samuel D. Hunter, Katori Hall, Kimber Lee, Dominique Morisseau, A. Rey Pamatmat & Tommy Smith

“Provocatively creepy, Tommy Smith’s drama, about an intimate relationship between a school secretary and a 14-year-old student, daringly focused on the psychology rather than the morality of this tinderbox situation, dexterously handled by the leads, Rebecca Gray and Ian Bamberg.” – Charles McNulty

Thanksgiving weekend 1971. A man calling himself D.B. Cooper boards a plane in Portland, hijacks it for $200,000 at the SeaTac Airport, then parachutes into a snowstorm over Mount Rainier, never to be seen again. “db” brings to life this electric story, showing how the enduring myth of Cooper has created a canvas for regular Americans to act out fantasies of heroism, celebrity, revenge, retribution, and rage.

Directed by Teddy Bergman, “db” will be developed via the PCS JAW Festival over the course of two weeks with other work by Adam Bock, Penny Penniston & Mat Smart.

“ **** Incendiary … [Tommy Smith’s] dialogue has brass on its knuckles … WHITE HOT brands Smith forcefully as a talent to watch and to stomach.” — Adam Feldman, TIME OUT NEW YORK

“A beautifully written study in nihilism … revealing why so many marriages, based on such blind attempts at controlling another person and some understandably devious responses to it, lead to duplicitous affairs.” – Steven Leigh Morris, LA WEEKLY

“A powerful play … Mamet, Pinter, Beckett: We see all these influences in Smith’s writing. But he adds something of his own which deviates from the Absurdists, and which makes his technique an actor’s play.” – Ed Farolan, REVIEW VANCOUVER

“[A] bedeviling and stimulating play … Playwright Tommy Smith at no point tips his hand and even at the play’s finale offers no unequivocal resolution of his various contending tones of menace, unease, dependency and control, all of which remain disquietingly fluid within and among each of the characters.” – The Hollywood Reporter

“Masterful, mesmerizing … Smith has gift for exposing dark truths with seemingly superficial dialogue; his take on middle age as a developmental stage rivaling adolescence in its confusion seems right on the money.” – LA Times

“A nuanced and penetrating portrait of the tragic dynamics of [an] illicit and illegal liaison. … Smith writes with an easy and natural touch, but seizes on the painful and dramatic truth of this dangerous affair.” – Huffington Post

“[A] darkly funny and disturbing new play … a disarmingly appealing ensemble strike just the right balance between uneasy laughter and unpalatable titillation to drive home Smith’s unsettling portrait of society.” – LA Weekly

“This is no walk in the park, this is a disturbing and morally complex story and playwright Tommy Smith has achieved the most important objective in writing something of this nature, he has almost completely removed his own opinion on the matter, leaving the work up to us, the audience. And it demands some work. But more importantly, because this show makes us care, we also care about doing that work and that, again, is an extraordinary achievement.” – Bitter Lemons, 92% Sweet

“Playwright Tommy Smith has a way with words … the incendiary yarn tells the tale of forbidden love and the flames that fan it, leaving everything in its fiery wake torched and in ashes.” – Stage & Cinema

“‘Firemen’ by Tommy Smith is a show I’d like to drag anyone to who’s never attended a live theatre production … It is a sharp, smartly written play that frames a precise selection of human foibles in a fashion neither formulaic nor fawning.” – Working Author